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=> Iraq and the Future of US Foreign Policy

Iraq and the Future of US Foreign Policy

Posted by Marcello (Guest) - Saturday, December 24 2011, 1:13:13 (UTC)
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Iraq and the Future of US Foreign Policy
with Hitchens and Parenti

In the thread below on the debate I had with Hitchens, my dear friend Laurie Wimmer asked: "Michael, did Hitchens ever acknowledge his fatal defense of WMD existence? I wouldn't expect him to say 'you were right Parenti' but how about 'oops!'?" Laurie and any other interested parties: Hitchens position remained unmovable. It goes as follows:1) "We had every reason to think Saddam had WMDs (weapons... of mass destruction)." When none were found, there is the fallback position: 2) "We have evidence that he might have been planning to develop them." When no evidence was found that he was planning to build WMDs then 3) "We stopped him before he got started. Why take a chance and wait until it is too late." Hitchens' position is essentially nonfalsifiable. It cannot be disproven. Evidence or no evidence brings us to the same conclusion. He often argued like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MufGs0MQrPg

Hitchens and I went at it at Wesleyan. I have read two books by Hitchens, the one on Mother Teresa and the one on Kissinger and found them both to be oddly thin in content and research. But when it comes to speaking, he was of exceptionally smooth locution as you will see in this tape. His position was shocking to me in its presumption that U.S. military... power can be used to rescue and police nations (while destroying them.) Once he threw in his lot with the neo-cons and Bushites, the mainstream media including Fox and all the other reactionaries opened their doors to him. He thus achieved a national exposure in one year that he had not been able to achieve in the 20 years before. As for myself, I was less interested in scoring debating points with Hitchens than in critiquing U.S. imperialism.

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